Comparison of three-dimensional pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling perfusion imaging with gradient-echo and spin-echo dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI

Purpose To compare the relative cerebral blood flow (CBF) obtained by pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling sequence incorporated with volumetric fast spin-echo readout (3D-PCASL) with those by gradient-echo (GE) and spin-echo (SE) dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI. Materials and Methods Thirty patients with various neurological diseases participated in this study. In addition to 3D-PCASL, 15 patients received GE-DSC and the others received SE-DSC imaging on a 3 Tesla scanner. A cortical gray matter (GM) to white matter (WM) and a thalamus (TM) to WM CBF ratio were determined from each perfusion scan. In addition, histograms of relative CBF distributions were obtained from each method for comparison. Results Significant correlations of CBF ratios were found between 3D-PCASL and the two DSC methods (P < 0.05). The 3D-PCASL resulted in GM/WM CBF ratios similar to SE-DSC but significantly smaller than GE-DSC (P = 2.3 × 10^-7). TM/WM CBF ratio obtained by 3D-PCASL was significantly smaller than those by GE- and SE-DSC (P = 4.1 × 10 ^-7 and 1.2 × 10^-6, respectively). The histogram of relative CBF maps obtained from SE-DSC, after applied spatial smoothing, agreed well with that from 3D-PCASL. Conclusion This study suggested that perfusion images obtained from 3D-PCASL exhibited significant correlations with DSC-MRI, with greater microvascular weighting like SE-DSC.